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you might think is strange, since all you did was ask them a question. And that’s the problem.
    It is imperative to know the two most important words in the French language—
“Bonjour, monsieur”
or
“Bonjour, madame”
—which you absolutely must say first thing to the first person you make eye contact with. Whether you step into a shop, a restaurant, a café, or even an elevator, you need to say those words to anyone else in there with you. Enter the doctor’s waiting room and everyone says their
bonjours.
Make sure to say them at the pharmacy, to the people who make you take off your belt at airport security, to the cashier who’s about to deny you a refund for your used-once broken ice cream scoop, as well as to the gap-toothed vendor at the market who’s moments away from short-changing you.
    If addressing a single woman, use
“Bonjour, mademoiselle.
” When I asked a Frenchman how one might discern the difference, he told me to use
mademoiselle
to address women who haven’t had sex yet. I don’t know how one can tell, but he assured me that Frenchmen can.
    The exceptions to the rule are
les grands magasins
, the multilevel Parisian department stores where the service is generally worse than wretched. The customers aren’t seen by the salesclerks as guests or visitors, but as a nuisance that gets in the way of the text message they’re composing. Or the chat they’re having with their coworkers about their breakup with a boyfriend. Or their interminable wait between trips outside for their next cigarette break.
    Yet Americans are forever fixated on the notion of how impolite the French are. Whenever I travel in the States, the number one question I’m asked is, “Do the French really hate Americans?”
    No, they don’t. But they don’t like the rude ones. (I don’t blame them; neither do I.) If you don’t want to be considered rude and want to be treated courteously, you must practice the rules of politesse, which sometimes seem awkward to Americans who are used to breezing into stores, and splitting without greeting anyone. Nowadays when I’m in the States and exiting any store at all, I make sure to say goodbye to each and everyperson, including the cashiers, stockboys, and clerks in the film department, as well as the security guards lurking about, which I need to stop doing. In Houston, a thinly veiled all-out alert was issued over the loudspeakers at Walgreens a few moments after I entered and said my usual “hellos” to everyone manning a register.
    In Paris, the most unbelievably rude thing you can do—and believe me, I seem to have done them all—is to not acknowledge a salesperson.
    One day, I was shopping in a fancy chocolate shop on the uptight Left Bank when an American couple walked in wearing shorts, untied sneakers, and baseball caps (mercifully, not turned backwards), toting hefty
venti lattes
from the nearby Starbucks. In Paris, this is like someone hauling a gallon jug of milk into the middle of Tiffany on Fifth Avenue and taking swigs from it. Their attire, coupled with the way they shoved the door wide open and jammed it into place, would have been bad enough. But they said absolutely not a peep to the shocked saleswoman, who greeted them as they entered the shop and breezed right past her. On my way out, I apologized profusely on their behalf since I have a vested stake in improving the image of Americans around here.
    This behavior can feel awkward at first, so it helps to think of shops in Paris as someone’s home. Imagine if someone came into your house as a guest and just barged past you at the doorway. I wouldn’t want to share my chocolates with them either. Those latte-toting folks weren’t being rude intentionally; they were just acting casual, like we normally do in America, where anything goes. Heck, I’ve even see people wearing sweatpants while doing things like taking out the trash back there—if you can believe it.
GATEAU THERESE
CHOCOLATE CAKE
MAKES 8